Planes, cars and history wrap up Mustang Days in Vacaville

From the way David G. Styles talks, citing dates, pilots, aircraft, aircraft carriers, Asian geography, you might think he curates the Jimmy Doolittle Air & Space Museum on Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield.

"He was the one who pioneered 'blind flying,' " the Stockton resident and author, said of Doolittle during Saturday's 4th Annual Mustang Days at Nut Tree Airport in Vacaville. Blind flying is instrument-only flying when pilots cannot see through clouds or mists, he pointed out.

Styles, who wrote "The Tuskegee Airmen & Beyond ... The Road to Equality," among other works, said the April 18, 1942, raid -- led by then-Lt. Col. James Doolittle, it was the first air raid by U.S. forces to strike the Japanese home islands -- proved that Japan was vulnerable to attack and lifted America's spirits after the devastating Dec. 7, 1941, sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

Standing under a tent that served as the museum's information booth at the popular daylong event, he said the significance of the raid was not fully understood until after World War II ended in 1945. The Japanese people began to doubt their leaders and the raid -- by crews manning 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers that took off from the carrier USS Hornet -- caused the Japanese to withdraw their formidable aircraft carrier force from the Indian Ocean to defend the home islands, he said.

"It was the first attack on Japan since Kublai Khan in 1271," noted Styles, who, as he revealed later, is a consulting historian at the museum.

A distinguished-looking, British-born man with a shock of gray hair, he said the Doolittle raid, which caused only negligible damage to Japan, contributed to Admiral Yamamoto's decision to attack Midway Island in early June 1942, an attack that proved to be a decisive rout of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

"From that point on, the U.S. never lost a naval battle" against the Japanese, said Styles, raising his voice as a vintage T-18 trainer, its engines roaring, soared off the county airport's runway, one of many aircraft -- from P-51 Mustangs to assorted biplanes to vintage jets to a B-25 -- featured at the event.

Seated near Styles, Denell Burks, a member of the Doolittle museum board, chatted and passed out fliers about the Stars & Stripes fundraising dinner and auction, Nov. 10 at the airport, off County Airport Road. Its purpose is to raise money for the new Doolittle Air & Space Museum that, if all goes as planned, will be built just a stone's throw from the airport, on an 11.4-acre piece of land near the former Travis Credit Union stadium.

As it has in years past, Mustang Days, hosted by Doolittle museum's foundation and the airport, offered the public a chance to do many things: Meet and mingle with air enthusiasts and pilots, get close to vintage, WW II-era "warbirds," among them T-28 Trojans, PT-17 Stearmans and FM-2 Wildcats -- all lined up in tidy formations -- take a 15-minute flight in a restored aircraft, chat with members of local and regional Ford Mustang car clubs and get an eyeful of beautifully restored cars or just walk around the airport tarmac and bask under sunny skies as temperatures rose into the mid-70s.

Quaffing a soda, Ken Terpstra, vice president of the Stockton Field Aviation Museum, stood in front a PV-2D Harpoon, which, he said, was built at the Lockheed plant in Burbank for the invasion of Japan in 1945.

Painted a deep, flat blue, the aircraft, one of only 35 made, "is so rare, people don't know what she is," he said.

Nearby, Heather Pickel of Vacaville snapped a photo of her son, Derek, 6, clad in an olive drab flight suit, similar to the one his father, Tech. Sgt. James Pickel, who brought his 2003 Mustang Cobra to the event, wears while on duty at Travis Air Force Base.

"It's just a little bit of history," she said of the event. "And it's just a great community feeling."